The Main Drivers of Soviet Foreign Policy Towards India, 1955–1991

In 1986, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev described the Soviet Union’s relationship with India as “exemplary.”1 Indeed, from the mid-1950s until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Moscow often saw its relationship with India as a “model” for Soviet foreign policy toward developing countries.2 The endurance of a partnership between these two large and complex countries with very different political, economic, and social characteristics during much of the Cold War merits greater study. The Soviet Union, an enormous multinational state formed in 1922 after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 with Marxism-Leninism as its core ideology, was clear about the inherent superiority of communism. The Republic of India, which won independence from the United Kingdom in 1947 as a parliamentary democracy, saw its own future path as not being dogmatic to either capitalism or communism. The two countries would eventually form a relationship of mutual convenience, accentuated by both affinity and common interests, deftly navigating differences across multiple decades.

Over the course of the 36 years from the Soviet leadership’s maiden visit to India in 1955 to the disintegration of the Soviet Union as a unified state, Moscow’s association with New Delhi stands out as perhaps the Soviet Union’s only bilateral relationship of consequence with a non-communist country that remained relatively stable and resoundingly positive. Soviet leadership had initially made overtures to a number of Third World countries during the Khrushchev era, notably Egypt and Indonesia. Political upheavals and strategic reorientation in Jakarta in 1965 and in Cairo in 1972 respectively, however, saw both countries distancing themselves from Moscow. Yet, India remained a steadfast friend of the Soviet Union until its demise.

The robust and enduring nature of the Soviet Union’s ties with India — unlike Moscow’s tempestuous ties with other newly independent countries like Egypt and Indonesia — was due to significant levels of political and economic alignment, which endured across changing leadership and geopolitical realities in both countries. But what underpinned this structural alignment from Moscow’s side? Was it an ideological desire to see a socialist, if not communist, India becoming a shining example to the decolonized world or its ambition as an emergent superpower to befriend India for perceived geopolitical gains?

This article explores the main drivers of Soviet foreign policy toward India in the post-Stalin era. What drove the Soviet Union, under Khrushchev, to reach out to India from 1955 and what exactly did it seek from the relationship? Were Soviet leaders consistent in their motivations toward India? Why did the Soviet-Indian partnership endure throughout the Cold War when other similar relationships did not? Finally, at a fundamental level, why were the Soviets interested in India?

The relationship between Moscow and New Delhi was neither a conventional military alliance nor a traditional patron-client bond between two states. Neither country was prepared to compromise on perceived national interests for the other side. India did not heed the Soviet Union’s advice of avoiding military intervention during the run-up to the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971. Aiding and supporting East Pakistan’s secession from Pakistan was of vital strategic importance to New Delhi as a unique opportunity to bisect its traditional military rival and shore up its eastern flank. The Soviet Union, similarly, did not give any weight to India’s concerns when it invaded Afghanistan in 1979. However, apart from a few exceptions, the Soviet Union and India developed a close relationship, where both sides were keen to support each other — both due to hard security concerns as well as some level of socialist and anti-imperialist solidarity. While early expectations of spreading communism in Indian domestic politics soon faded away, ideological alignment was not completely absent in Soviet-Indian relations. From the Soviet perspective, the desired ideological convergence was not about India becoming a full-fledged communist state — like Romania or Vietnam — but instead about two large non-Western states coming together in a bid to contest worldwide Western hegemony.

Three distinct drivers can help us to understand the making of Soviet foreign policy toward India. The desire to spread communism as a domestic political ideology was the first driver, considering the “central role” of Marxist-Leninist ideology in Soviet politics.3 The second driver dealt with the Cold War confrontation between the Soviet Union and United States that played out across the world. Finally, developments in the Sino-Soviet relationship and Moscow’s regional vision for Asia were the third driver of Soviet policy. Although ideology tinged the Soviet Union’s relationships with both the United States and China, the second and third drivers focus less on the ideological contests Moscow had with both Washington and Beijing and instead focus more on the realpolitik nature of the geopolitical rivalry that was central to their relationships.

Each driver played a critical role in defining the Indo-Soviet relationship, with their respective impacts fluctuating depending on broader Soviet foreign policy ambitions at the time. Soviet goals varied depending on who was in power in Moscow and how the respective leaders viewed the relationship with their principal interlocutors in Washington and Beijing. While Soviet-Indian relations would experience a series of twists and turns, Soviet policy was always guided by how India could play into Moscow’s global ambitions. For the Soviet Union, India represented a “good bet” among many made during the heady days of the post-Stalin era, when decolonization created several newly independent countries for the two superpowers to court. Moscow certainly capitalized on the initial opportunity it found in the world’s largest democracy around an openness to a non-capitalist and even non-Western path forward. The Soviets were pragmatic and ultimately far-sighted enough to not focus narrowly on the spread of communism as a domestic political ideology in India. Instead, they largely refrained from shaping India internally and focused on how they could use the young country’s natural proclivity of resisting Western hegemony and its inherited border dispute with its neighbor Pakistan to the Soviet Union’s benefit in its varying contests against the United States and China.

This article is based on a literature review of scholarly works from 1955 to 1991 as well as newer works derived from recently declassified U.S. government sources. It delves into the unique relationship between the world’s erstwhile largest communist state and the world’s largest democracy, one that deserves greater scholarly attention from a historical perspective. While there are a number of existing works on the Soviet-Indian relationship that examine the bilateral relationship in detail, there is limited English-language scholarship on both the complexity of the Soviet-Indian relationship as well as a deliberate analysis of Soviet engagement toward India. This work aims to address this gap by analyzing Soviet policies under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Mikhail Gorbachev, respectively, refracted through the three lenses of ideology, Sino-Soviet relations, and the U.S.-Soviet geopolitical contest.

The Stalinist principle of “who is not with us is against us” soon gave way to an opportunistic approach of “who is not against us is potentially with us.”

The period of study covered in this article spans from 1955, when Soviet leaders made their much-publicized visit to India, to the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. Joseph Stalin was famously uninterested in India, seeing the world as containing only “two camps.”4 For Stalin, an independence movement that was not communist-led was “merely a tool of imperialism, a sham movement not to be trusted.”5 Some historians have noted that in his final years, Stalin did begin to see India’s value as an independent actor on the world stage as it emerged as a “non-aligned power capable of influencing events arising from cold war politics” during the Korean War of 1950­–1953.6

It was, however, the death of Stalin in 1953 that provided the impetus — and freedom — for a more nuanced Soviet foreign policy. Stalin’s successors did not share his binary views of a so-called two camp world.7 Instead, the new Soviet leadership of Georgy Malenkov, Nikolai Bulganin, and Nikita Khrushchev saw an opportunity in cultivating relations with the newly independent countries, understanding the value of such partnerships in the growing geopolitical contest against the United States. In the years that followed, two forces drove Soviet policy — the need to reduce the risk of nuclear war and the fostering and protecting of “national liberation movements and their revolutionary transition to socialism.”8 The Stalinist principle of “who is not with us is against us” soon gave way to an opportunistic approach of “who is not against us is potentially with us.”9

Khrushchev, especially after his rise to the first among equals in 1955, expounded a more innovative foreign policy which saw a greater role for countries of the Third World in the Cold War. This vision resulted in more attention on India. According to William Barnds, “Stalin’s successors were aware that India was no tool of the West” and therefore anticipated “weakening India’s links with the West and moving the country to the left domestically.”10 It would fall to Khrushchev to make the relationship’s opening gambit.

The Khrushchev Era: 1955­­–1964

Soviet outreach to the Third World began in 1955, when Malenkov, Bulganin, and Khrushchev visited India, Burma, and Afghanistan. The Soviet leaders were very well received in India by crowds of millions, described by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru as a “feast of friendliness” in a visit later considered a “watershed for the Soviet Union’s relations both with India and the rest of the developing world.”11 The visit also marked the beginning of the Soviet Union offering development aid and assistance, with the Soviets agreeing to build and help finance a massive steel mill in the city of Bhilai in east central India along with the relevant technology transfer. The mega project would eventually be described as an “icon” of Soviet-Indian cooperation.12 While projects like Bhilai contributed to a greater “Soviet economic offensive” toward India, the Soviet leadership had ideological goals in mind as well.13 Soviet leaders envisaged the mill “as a symbol of Soviet beneficence and of Indo-Soviet friendship.” For Khrushchev, the aid was meant to “create the basis of friendship and mutual confidence on which to build our relations with India.”14 The Soviets hoped to do a number of things at once through offering assistance: “create friendliness with former colonies” and “exploit their feelings against former colonial powers,” all while enhancing the Soviet Union’s own prestige in the world relative to the West.15

The Soviet Union’s rationale for engaging with the newly independent countries was clear to observers at the time. Moscow had a relatively straightforward objective to “promote the estrangement of the West” and weaken the grip of Western power in south Asia.16 Khrushchev’s moves were part of a broader Soviet “policy of competition and denial” that sought to win over Third World countries on “issues of importance to Moscow, and to counter a situation in which economic, political, and military advantages might accrue to the West in these countries to the detriment of the USSR.”17 There was also hope, retrospectively called “exaggerated optimism,” in nudging developing countries “towards the establishment of a more scientific form of socialism along Soviet and East European lines.”18

For Khrushchev, India represented a triple opportunity. First, it was a large and important non-aligned country that the Soviet leadership wanted to prevent from drifting toward the West. Second, the Soviets saw India as a country ripe for the “peaceful transition to socialism.”19 Nehru’s own brand of “socialism” was seen as palatable in Moscow, with Soviet leadership even hoping in the late 1950s that the Communist Party of India could improve its “stature” and political prospects — though this would subsequently prove to be a false dawn.20 Finally, the Soviet Union was hoping to gain “New Delhi’s diplomatic support for its political objectives throughout the world.”21

Ideological optimism about the prospects of a “bright socialist future” characterized the early years of Khrushchev’s tenure, especially as the “Sputnik moment” arrived in 1957.22 Vojtech Mastny described Khrushchev as “the last true believer in the ideals of communism,” who believed the Soviet Union could “beat its capitalist foes because of its system’s supposed ideological assets, political strength, and superior economic performance.”23 Khrushchev saw the Third World, with its anti-colonial attitude and self-perceptions of victimhood and suffering, as a “natural ally of the socialist Second World and their global cause.”24 Under Nehru, India developed a global reputation for speaking out against Western colonialism and imperialism. Nehru himself had become an influential leader to be wooed by both the Americans and Soviets with his “personal prestige” being regarded as “very high.”25 In a private conversation with his Chinese counterpart a few months before the aborted 1960 East-West summit in Geneva, a Soviet diplomat revealed that earning the Indian leader’s support was crucial: “Nehru is highly influential in Asia” and “can become an ally against Eisenhower.” Consequently, having him on Moscow’s side “will put the Soviet Union in a fairly advantageous position” in the competition against United States.26 For his part, President Dwight D. Eisenhower described Nehru as “one of the most powerful influences for peace and conciliation in the world.” Like the Soviets, getting the leader of “the largest of the neutral nations” on Washington’s side had become an important prize.27

The Soviet “cultural offensive” on India was part of a grander ambition to tap into the “anticolonial solidarity” shared by the newly independent countries in Asia and Africa.28 The influential Indo-Soviet Cultural Society, a civic association promoting people-to-people ties and cross-cultural understanding, came into the limelight during Khrushchev’s 1955 visit to India as it orchestrated events for the public portraying the Soviet Union “in a good light.”29 The two countries also entered into an “Agreement Concerning Cultural, Scientific and Technological Corporation” in 1960 to formalize already close ties and lay out a roadmap for future relations.30 The Soviet strategy of cultural diplomacy had a clear aim of attracting elites in newly independent countries such as India to “establish socialist fraternity” across the developing world.31 Communist ideology gained increasing legitimacy in Indian domestic politics, as the Communist Party of India won an increasing number of parliamentary seats in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Khrushchev’s ideological optimism and “uncomplicated but deeply held convictions” drove Soviet foreign policy in general and the focus on India in particular.32 He anticipated “fairly rapid transition[s] by postcolonial states toward Soviet style ‘socialism,’”33 where the Soviets could bring about favorable outcomes at “relatively low cost.”34 The Soviet leadership had “confidence that socialist ideas have an irresistible attraction in countries like India” where a “peaceful transition” to socialism was likely.35 Soviet leaders began to see India “as an example par excellence of the Third World path of non-capitalist development” that could be exported across Asia and Africa.36

Nehru was not in favor of communist ideology, writing in 1958 that “communism has definitely allied itself to the approach of violence” and that “it does not seek to change by persuasion or peaceful democratic pressures, but by coercion.” Yet he was also convinced that “in a poorly developed country” such as India, “the capitalist method offers no chance” of equitable growth and development.37 As a committed democrat, he believed that India’s future economic direction should be guided by “planning under a democratic pattern of socialism.”38 This was evidently good enough for Khrushchev. He wrote in his memoirs that while “it was not clear what the strategic long-term direction of development would be in India,” he saw Nehru as a “most progressive” leader who was “pursuing an anti-imperialist policy.”39 Khrushchev was patient enough to “let life itself force Nehru to take a correct position that would satisfy the needs of the masses” while the Soviets would do “everything we could in practice to encourage him to take the socialist path of development.”40

Ideological alignment was a key driver of Soviet engagement of India during Khrushchev’s tenure. While the ruling Congress government in India had no desire to yield any political power to the Indian communists — with Nehru even dismissing a communist government in the state of Kerala in 1959 — the Soviet Union had found a major developing country that was distrustful of the West and its capitalist model, was open to socialist ideas informing economic policy, and had elites with a reasonable understanding of the Soviet worldview.41

India’s attraction drew from its profile and weight in the international arena, rather than its geographic position or military capabilities.

While the promotion of communism as a domestic political ideology would eventually not be seen as being particularly significant by Moscow in the Soviet-Indian relationship in coming decades, the initial years of the Khrushchev era were not devoid of optimism. Writing in 1958, Gene Overstreet believed that Soviet leaders found Indian socialism as “rather useful” with them calculating that they would “have nothing to lose by supporting it, and that what Nehru sows, the Indian communists will reap.” According to Overstreet, Khrushchev envisaged “a goal of a parliamentary victory for the Communist Party of India.”42 However, these hopes soon receded after the party split up in 1964 and thereafter was no longer the second-largest party in the Indian parliament, as it had been during the Khrushchev era. Historians have since identified the “apparent contradiction between the Soviet Union’s consistent support of India at the cost of the political fortunes of the CPI.” Yet, this was likely a reflection of the fact that the Soviet Union saw significant foreign policy overlap with India regardless of which political party was in power in New Delhi.43 For the Soviet Union, it was simply more practical to “concentrate less on the kingdom to come” and more on its “quite concrete investment in a staunchly anti-China national bourgeoise government in New Delhi.”44

India’s role and place in the Cold War was an important factor for Soviet interest during the Khrushchev era. Despite being newly independent and lacking material resources, the two superpowers saw India as an important international voice, with the mid-1950s being a period of “very high Indian involvement in international issues” ranging from high-level pronouncements on regional conflicts (e.g., the Suez Crisis) to nuclear disarmament, as well as activism in the United Nations.45 For Khrushchev, India was “one of the leading states, a country whose voice is heeded not only in Asia, but throughout the world” and, thus, one that should be courted to lean more toward the Soviet Union.46 As a recently decolonized country, Khrushchev considered the Soviet Union a natural partner for India. By contrast, the United States supposedly espoused “an imperial policy” and was thus not compatible with New Delhi.47

Khrushchev was not especially interested in India’s military utility. In general, he had a more political, rather than a hard security-oriented, worldview, as he often made threats about intervening in far-flung parts of the world despite his country lacking the requisite military capabilities to do so. Lorenz Luthi has detailed an incident when the Soviet Navy Supreme Command had approached Khrushchev in 1958 to “erect radio transmitter stations in southern India.” Khrushchev, however, rejected the proposal, believing it might “endanger nascent relations with India.”48 India’s attraction drew from its profile and weight in the international arena, rather than its geographic position or military capabilities. Declassified documents show that “Cold War competition with the United States played a salient role in Soviet policymaking” with Khrushchev fearing the “enemy camp would gain dominance in Asia.”49 The Soviet Union under Khrushchev saw India as a reliable partner in the deepening Cold War. Even if India would not act on the diplomatic stage akin to the Soviet Union’s communist allies, its sympathy toward Soviet positions was an asset for Moscow during the early years of the Cold War.

Foreign policy convergences on diplomatic issues between Moscow and New Delhi also began occurring after the two countries cemented their bilateral relationship in 1955. The Soviet Union, for example, appreciated when India “voted against a UN resolution calling for free elections in Hungary and the withdrawal of Soviet forces” in 1956, much to the surprise of many in the West.50 India acted in a similar manner during the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Nehru “did not like the wall, but tried to understand the Soviet attitude and made a few half-hearted statements about the German problem.”51 The Khrushchev era also saw the beginning of a fallout between the Soviet Union and China, with India emerging as a bone of contention between Moscow and Beijing. The Soviet Union’s strengthening ties with India weighed on its own “fraternal” bond with China, a fellow communist state, during the 1959 Chinese-Indian border skirmishes and the wider 1962 Chinese-Indian war.52 The Soviet leadership informed the Chinese that “they considered China responsible” for the 1959 skirmishes and publicly released a statement that Mastny characterized as “amounting to a declaration of neutrality in a quarrel between friends,”53 with historians recognizing Khrushchev as having “tacitly supported India.”54

Moscow and Beijing had initially decided by a “gentlemen’s agreement” to treat southeast Asia as within the Chinese sphere of influence with India, Afghanistan, and western Asia part of the Soviet sphere. However, this arrangement “ended in 1958 by Chinese intervention in India.”55 Clashes on the Line of Actual Control between Chinese and Indian forces in 1959 and 1962 resulted in Sino-Soviet disagreements over India’s role in the unfolding fallout between the two communist powers.

More skirmishes between the Chinese and Indian militaries along the Line of Actual Control led to a further worsening of ties between Moscow and Beijing, which resulted in the Soviet Union belatedly deciding to partially support China in the 1962 war. However, such support was insufficient to prevent the continuing deterioration in Sino-Soviet relations.56 Khrushchev was reportedly motivated by “his need for a united communist front” during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, rather than any actual preference for China over India.57 In any case, Nehru remained wary of relying fully on Western powers “lest this lead to the end of nonalignment and to Soviet support of China” despite Moscow having “disappointed” New Delhi during the war.58 In the mid-1960s, China eventually emerged as the common enemy of both the Soviet Union and India and soon “defined their relationship,” but Khrushchev was no longer in power, having been ousted by his peers in 1964.59 While the Soviet Union would eventually view India as a “counterweight” toward China, such a role seemed far from the thoughts of Soviet policymakers during the Khrushchev era.60

The Sino-Soviet split had begun during the Khrushchev era but had not been completed by the time he was removed from power. Writing to his chief ministers in 1963, Nehru identified that although Moscow and Beijing differed ideologically, their “basic difference” was “of two huge land masses confronting each other and gradually coming into conflict over national interests and for political reasons.” He surmised that, “If communism had not been there, this would have still happened.”61

In his initial years, Khrushchev had hoped for broad alignment amongst the Soviet Union, China, and India, with Nehru’s proclamation of the “Panchsheel principles of peaceful coexistence” in India’s relationship with China marking a promising start.62 The border skirmishes in 1959 and the full-fledged war in 1962, however, made clear that India and China would share an antagonistic relationship that limited Moscow’s ability to develop a pro-Soviet regional bloc in Asia. While Khrushchev tried his best to minimize disagreements between India and China, his successors would instead use the prickly relations between New Delhi and Beijing to Moscow’s advantage.

Within the first few years of the Khrushchev era, it was clear that “nowhere in non-communist Asia has Soviet foreign policy achieved so much in so brief a period as in India.”

Although communist China was a crucial Soviet ally in its initial years, it soon became evident that the two countries had different visions for Asia. The Chinese under Mao Zedong had a more radical vision, backing several communist-led insurgencies across Asia to continue the revolutionary struggle in “anti-revisionist directions.” On the other hand, the Soviet Union began to value the relations it had with the non-aligned, but also non-communist governments of countries like India, Burma, and Indonesia.63 While China saw the potential for insurrection in India, the Soviet Union saw more gain in supporting the Nehru-led Congress government in New Delhi.

The Khrushchev era would prove to be pivotal for Soviet-Indian relations, having provided significant impetus for this blossoming partnership. Within the first few years of the Khrushchev era, it was clear that “nowhere in non-communist Asia has Soviet foreign policy achieved so much in so brief a period as in India.”64 The initial outreach to India in 1955 was not unique, but part of a global Soviet outreach other major Third World countries, notably Egypt and Indonesia, as the Cold War deepened. However, unlike what transpired later in Jakarta and Cairo, respectively — with the ouster of Sukarno in 1965 and Sadat expelling Soviet troops in 1972 — New Delhi would not veer away from its growing strategic partnership with Moscow during the subsequent Brezhnev era. It would also share Moscow’s growing suspicion towards Beijing.

The Brezhnev Era: 1964–1982

The ouster of Khrushchev as first secretary occurred a mere five months after the death of Nehru. Leonid Brezhnev succeeded Khrushchev in October 1964. Within a few months, war broke out between India and Pakistan in 1965 with the new Soviet leadership beginning to take a bigger interest in south Asian geopolitics.65 Far from unconditionally backing New Delhi against Islamabad, Moscow emerged as a peacemaker between the two countries, with Soviet premier Aleksey Kosygin brokering a compromise between India and Pakistan at Tashkent in January 1966. The Tashkent conference was regarded a Soviet “diplomatic success” while “the erstwhile mediators in the region — the United States and the United Kingdom — were reduced to mere spectators.”66

The Soviet Union’s decision to not take India’s side in the war with Pakistan reflected a newfound interest in international peacemaking. The Soviets also did not want to alienate Pakistan just to support India. As the Sino-Soviet split deepened in the mid-1960s the Soviet leadership became more concerned about its relationship with Pakistan, which was increasing its own ties with China. Pakistan’s signing of a border agreement with China in 1963 to formally delimit and demarcate the boundary between the two countries had laid the foundation of an “all weather friendship” between India’s two largest neighbors.67 One Indian analyst speculated that geographic proximity made the Soviets worry more about “Pakistan’s growing cordiality with China” as compared to the existing U.S.-Pakistani friendship.68 A desire to convince India and Pakistan to “unite against China in the defense of the subcontinent,” rather than “spending their energy quarrelling among themselves,” motivated Kosygin’s peacemaking effort in Tashkent.69

India and Pakistan were to go to war again six years later in 1971. The “Bangladesh Liberation War” was a watershed moment in Soviet-Indian relations, not least because of the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation signed by Moscow and New Delhi in August 1971.70 This was the first treaty signed by independent India, marking a major “turning point” in its traditional non-alignment policy.71 In a memo to President Richard Nixon, acting Secretary of State John N. Irwin II attributed the “Indian decision to depart from its formal posture of non-alliance” to changing perceptions about the distribution of international power.72 Despite earlier misgivings about the break-up of Pakistan — Soviet leadership believed that “a breakaway east Pakistan would be vulnerable to the influence and domination of China”— the Soviet Union came to fulsomely support India in the war, and proved to provide an effective deterrent against both the Chinese and the Americans intervening on the side of Pakistan.73 Anatolyn Dobrynin, the Soviet Union’s ambassador to the United States at the time, claimed it was the Soviet Union’s “diplomatic intervention” due to its close ties with India that had “helped prevent the military conflict from spreading” toward West Pakistan, which the Nixon administration was anxious to prevent.74

Soviet support of India during the 1971 war, however, was not given without Moscow’s best interests in mind. There were Cold War considerations in play, considering the United States supported Pakistan as a “valuable diplomatic partner.” Washington had also dispatched an aircraft carrier group to the Bay of Bengal during the war to signal that “it was possible that the United States would assist Pakistan,” though it ultimately resisted from directly entering the conflict.75 A declassified CIA report prepared during the war specified that the Soviets hoped that “their present support for New Delhi” would translate “into gains for the USSR … in Moscow’s broader struggle with the Chinese.”76 The Soviet commitment to India was limited, given that the 1971 cooperation treaty only called for “mutual consultations”’ and had no explicit requirement for mutual military support. The Soviet Union had offered India the same deal a few years earlier in 1969, arising from a Soviet “guilt complex” prompted by the strong Indian opposition to the offer of Soviet arms to Pakistan that year.77

India’s victory over Pakistan in 1971, and the subsequent independence of the state of Bangladesh, suggested that “US influence in India had declined dramatically, and Soviet influence had never been greater.”78 The Economist described the “destruction of the approximate balance of power on the subcontinent” as leaving the Soviet Union “the patron and protector of the local cock of the roost.”79 Soviet-Indian relations seemed to be on a meteoric rise, with an opposition Indian politician soon writing an essay about a question that many pondered: “Is India a Soviet ally?”80 The Soviet and Indian governments hoped that closer political alignment could spill over into other areas, with the Indo-Soviet Joint Commission on Economic, Scientific and Technical Cooperation created in 1972, which envisaged joint cooperation in “ventures in third countries.”81 There were even rumors of India joining the Soviet-led Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, the eastern bloc’s version of the Marshall Plan, after the council’s first meeting in February 1973.82 The Soviet cultural offensive on India also reached new heights, with the Indo-Soviet Cultural Society becoming the “most important channel to promote Indo-Soviet friendship” by Moscow.83

The “highest point” of Soviet-Indian relations might have come in November 1973 when Brezhnev delivered a rousing speech at the historic Red Fort in Delhi.84 In the speech, the Soviet leader endorsed the “progressive credentials” of the Indira Gandhi-led Congress government, effectively “relegating the CPI to a redundant appendage in Indian politics” according to Ramesh Thakur.85

Subsequent events were to prove the meteoric rise to be unsustainable. Indian policymakers took pains to emphasize that India remained non-aligned and was free to sign similar treaties with other countries, including the United States.

By the mid-1970s, a surge of political unrest and demonstrations against the government began to distract India’s focus from foreign affairs. Domestic political unrest ensued after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed an “emergency” in June 1975 suspending civil liberties nationwide, while arresting opposition leaders and imposing strict press censorship.86 The Soviet Union initially provided “unequivocal support” to the Indian government, with the Soviet press particularly lending “enthusiastic support.” An overconfident Gandhi lifted the restrictions and called for a general election in March 1977, assuming an easy victory for the Congress party. The decision backfired, ushering in the first non-Congress-led government in the history of independent India, headed by a man who had previously been described by Khrushchev as “an enemy of communism” in 1960.87

The new Janata Party-led government, under Prime Minister Morarji Desai, was keen to correct what it perceived as “India’s unbalanced alignment with the Soviet Union.” Desai tried to chart out a more balanced geopolitical orientation for India between the United States and the Soviet Union but made little progress in this endeavor.88 Ultimately Desai was able to maintain India’s strong relationship with the Soviet Union during his term, with the sales of Soviet military hardware even reaching its peak during his premiership.89 Soviet leaders welcomed Gandhi’s eventual return to power in 1980, though she “was apprehensive of becoming tied too closely with Moscow” during her second stint as prime minister. Gandhi sought to diversify India’s “diplomatic investments” by improving relations with western European powers as well as the United States.90

Instead, the Soviet Union in the Brezhnev era sought to pursue joint benefits in bilateral relations with other states, such as trade and foreign policy alignment, which could then be used to gain geopolitical advantage over the United States and China.

The Soviet Union’s approach toward the global spread of communist ideology changed after the Khrushchev era. The political scientist William Zimmerman summarized in 1970 that it was apparent “states had taken precedence over the world systems of capitalism and socialism as the main actors in the international arena.”91 The Soviet Union was no longer guided by Bolshevik assumptions that “the state was little more than a front organization” for capitalists. “The atomic bomb does not observe the class principle,” observed a Soviet official in 1963. This sentiment would lead Moscow to focus more on the material capabilities of states rather than ideological debates about the perceived superiority of communism over capitalism.92 The Sino-Soviet split had “even produced open misgivings among Soviet elites about the very desirability of a communist international system,” with Vitali Korionov, a Soviet official, wondering whether the “new world system of Socialist states” would be united or divided.93 Instead, the Soviet Union in the Brezhnev era sought to pursue joint benefits in bilateral relations with other states, such as trade and foreign policy alignment, which could then be used to gain geopolitical advantage over the United States and China. While the Soviet Union still paid lip service to supporting the Communist Party of India in Indian domestic politics, ideological alignment became deemphasized in the Brezhnev years. The revolutionary optimism characteristic of the Khrushchev era had faded away. Soviet foreign policy was now “based firmly on the foundations of military power”94 with the lofty goals of peaceful coexistence replaced with the narrower and more pragmatic policy of detente, the “central feature of Brezhnev’s foreign policy” toward the United States.95

Soviet views on providing development aid had also evolved during the Brezhnev era. Unlike the exuberance around spending resources to help achieve the goal of building “a bright future for world socialism” of the Khrushchev era, Moscow now saw less of a role for traditional development aid and constructing mega projects.96 By the 1970s, the Soviet Union’s economic outreach to India was driven less by ideology and more focused on arms sales and bilateral trade. Soviet economists habitually railed against a “colonial relationship” characterized by Western powers extracting goods from the third world. However, they merely wanted to replace the West with the Soviet Union as the export destination to satisfy Soviet mercantile requirements.97

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 dominated the final years of the Brezhnev era. New Delhi was squeamish about the Soviet Union using military force in India’s neighborhood. In January 1980, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko went to New Delhi to secure Gandhi’s support for the unpopular war, given that most nonaligned countries had opposed the invasion.98 Gromyko offered $1.6 billion of Soviet weapons sales with an extended payback period of 15 years (the standard period had been 10 years).99 By the early 1980s, arms sales were central to the relationship. India became a leading global weapons importer, 85 percent of which were Soviet.100

The Soviet offer paid off. In an emergency special session in January 1980, India agreed to abstain from a U.N. General Assembly resolution condemning the invasion of Afghanistan. New Delhi also refused to criticize Moscow’s actions in public settings. While these moves earned India Moscow’s appreciation, New Delhi never committed to explicitly endorsing the war.101 Jyotindra Nath Dixit, a former Indian foreign secretary, wrote about a “controversial and stillborn Soviet suggestion” in 1982 for India to try to “take advantage of the Soviet presence in Afghanistan” and take control of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, but New Delhi’s wariness of Chinese troops in western Tibet made it reject any such adventures.102

Under Brezhnev, spreading communism as a domestic political ideology in India was no longer a Soviet priority with hopes that India would move further towards socialism. The influence of Communist Party of India began to fade within India’s central government. By 1967, the party lost its place as the second largest political party in parliament. Historian Robert H. Donaldson noted in 1972 that “the old Soviet dream of a Communist India may now be a nightmare,” given that “communist rule in poverty-ridden and overpopulated India would prove to be an immense material burden” for Moscow. While the Soviets would have likely been happy had the communists came to power in New Delhi, India’s foreign policy actions were far more important to the Soviets than its domestic politics. A pliable Indian government that bowed to the Soviet Union’s wishes while paying only lip service toward socialism seemed preferable to Moscow, observed Donaldson, than a potential “Communist India thumbing its nose at ‘bourgeois’ Russia and embarking hand-in-hand with Peking on Mao Tse-Tung’s path to utopia.”103

By the end of the Brezhnev era in the early 1980s, much of the ideological convergence in the Soviet-Indian relationship had disappeared as the two sides began taking a more pragmatic approach toward the other. Robert C. Horn assessed that the offer of arms to India in return for New Delhi’s support for the Afghanistan war represented “a trade-off of favours between the two states” rather than any genuine alignment.104

The Soviet Union’s more pragmatic approach to world affairs during the Brezhnev years saw Moscow look at New Delhi in a new light. Under Brezhnev, the Soviet Union acquired new global military capabilities, especially in the naval realm. The Soviet navy increased deployments and port calls across the Indian Ocean after the British declared its intention to withdraw “east of Suez.”105 Moscow tried and failed to gain access to Indian naval facilities for the Soviet naval squadron in the Indian Ocean.106 While India would permit Soviet ships to refit and refuel at Indian ports, similar privileges were granted to both British and French ships.107 Ultimately, Gandhi “condoned a Soviet naval presence in the Indian Ocean but successfully resisted pressure for the establishment of Soviet military facilities in India.”108

From a military perspective, India began to play a “vital role in the Soviet Indian Ocean strategy” with the Soviet Union transferring an “unprecedented” level of naval hardware and technology to India by the early 1980s. The level of naval hardware sold and technology transferred to India even exceeded what was offered to Warsaw Pact countries. While India did not officially permit Moscow to establish Soviet military bases on Indian territory, it was suspected that the two sides agreed to “a secret protocol giving the Soviet Navy base rights at the Indian navy’s submarine base of Vishakhapatnam.”109 This suggests the Soviets saw geostrategic value in securing Indian naval assets, whether ships or ports. The Soviet Union and India also publicly opposed the establishment of the U.S. naval base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. A joint statement in 1982 between India and the Soviet Union condemned “any attempts to build up foreign military presence in the Indian Ocean” while reiterating the two countries’ support “for the just claim of Mauritian sovereignty” over Diego Garcia.110

Moscow was also faced with the challenge of how to respond to India’s nuclear ambitions, particularly after the signing of the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The Soviet Union was one of the lead negotiators of the treaty, while India has never signed it. The Soviet Union’s initial reaction to India’s opposition was one of “displeasure,” given Moscow was “focused on preventing West Germany from developing nuclear weapons” and opposed nuclear proliferation in general.111 However, its attitude began changing in the 1970s, especially after West Germany signed the treaty in November 1969.112 The Soviet Union even began to hope that a potential nuclear test by India “would further aggravate Sino-Indian relations, and lessen China’s influence in Asia.”113 Moscow did not criticize India after its first successful nuclear weapon test in 1974, and even saw an opportunity to “enhance its influence in India” as relations with India’s existing nuclear fuel suppliers, the United States and Canada, deteriorated after the test. Brezhnev, who spoke in 1968 about China “putting pressure” on India for New Delhi “to create its own nuclear weapons,”114 eventually offered to sell a nuclear power plant to India during his visit in 1980, though the agreement would not be concluded until 1988.115

By the early 1980s, India emerged as the leading arms market in the developing world for the Soviet Union.116 From Moscow’s point of view, the deals were “avowedly designed to achieve political ends.” Such goals ranged from influencing the direction of Indian foreign policy to more muted ones like permitting “Soviet constituencies to be nurtured within Indian political parties and bureaucracy.”117 The Soviets typically offered India more attractive payment terms than Western powers would, in terms of costs and credit tenors, while also maintaining profitability and garnering political concessions. For example, Moscow offered generous terms to India in 1980 by extending the repayment period, a move that was meant to induce India’s support for, or at least acquiescence to, the Afghanistan invasion.118 Indian officials reportedly described the Indo-Soviet arms relationship as “a cold-blooded one in which both sides understand each other” despite the bonhomie on display by both sides.

However, arms sales as a dimension of Soviet engagement of India became a negative factor in the relationship in the early Brezhnev era. In 1968, Moscow announced an agreement to sell arms to Pakistan. While the amount was only a fraction of Soviet sales to India, it garnered a “decisively negative reaction,” with the opposition Jana Sangh party organizing “a huge demonstration outside the Soviet embassy in Delhi, which had to be dispersed by the police.”119 Parmeshwar Narayan Haksar, the principal secretary to Gandhi, advised the prime minister to register strong objections to the apparent “erroneous and misguided” Soviet decision.120 Such opposition to the Soviet-Pakistani deal prompted Moscow to offer India the Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation in 1969, which was kept on ice until Gandhi agreed to sign it in 1971.121

India’s leading role in establishing the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961 made it an attractive target for Moscow to court during the Brezhnev era.

Espionage and propaganda were also key Soviet foreign policy tools in the Brezhnev years. India was a focus area for KGB operations and was an important base for Soviet intelligence to expand its capabilities. Brezhnev “upgraded the KGB’s status and increased its powers” by bringing in KGB officials into the party leadership at all levels.122 The KGB, “unlike the CIA, believed that the Third World was the arena in which it could win the Cold War.”123 Gandhi apparently “placed no limit on the number of Soviet diplomats” posted in India, allowing the KGB “as many cover positions as they wished.”124 A former KGB senior official dubbed India “a model of KGB infiltration of a Third World government,” with the primary aim of KGB activity to “encourage support for the special relationship and strengthen suspicion for the United States.”125

While the campaign “to undermine Western influence across the developing world” started in 1961 with Khrushchev’s blessing, during the Brezhnev era it became central to the Soviet-Indian relationship.126 The Mitrokhin Archive describes India under Gandhi’s leadership as “probably the arena for more KGB active measures than anywhere else in the world.”127 The “substantial apparatus” of Soviet espionage, propaganda, and disinformation activities in India provided “a credible nonaligned base for their influence activities throughout the Third World.”128 Yet, historians have summarized that the KGB’s efforts in India had only “led to transitory successes rather than enduring influence.”129 India’s support as a “major independent country” of Soviet initiatives were also useful for internal and external propaganda purposes.130 A 1985 CIA report assessed that Soviet efforts in India reaped “handsome benefits for its foreign policy objectives in India and elsewhere in the Third World” by influencing Indian domestic political processes and public opinion, creating a “reliable conduit” for Soviet propaganda to the rest of the developing world, and undermining U.S. influence.131

India was willing to back Moscow in places deemed to have little strategic value for New Delhi. This included support for the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and recognition of the Soviet-allied and Vietnamese-backed Heng Samarin government of Kampuchea in 1980.132 An Indian opposition politician wrote in 1974 that the Indian government had “faithfully echoed the Soviet line” on various countries including Vietnam, Chile, and Guinea-Bissau.133 With these moves, India’s leaders calculated that there were no vital national interests at stake, which made aligning with the Soviet position easier.

India’s leading role in establishing the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961 made it an attractive target for Moscow to court during the Brezhnev era. The Soviet Union saw non-alignment principally as a “‘broad strategy of military denial of third world regions to the West.”134 The KGB regarded non-aligned countries as “natural allies” of Moscow while the Mitrokhin Archive revealed that the non-aligned “tended to vote in the UN with the Soviet bloc rather than West.”135 Even though the Non-Alignment Movement’s lack of influence in world affairs might have failed to meet the expectations of its co-founders, it nonetheless offered the Soviets numerous opportunities to capitalize on, given its strong ties with India. During the movement’s 1976 summit, for example, India, reportedly driven by Soviet “prodding,” blocked Romania from obtaining observer status in the organization.136 On another occasion before the movement’s foreign ministers meeting in 1981, the Soviets successfully pressed their Indian counterparts into drafting a joint declaration that was considered “blatantly anti-US and pro-Soviet.”137 From New Delhi’s perspective, tilting towards the Soviets while remaining formally unaligned was an acceptable cost to pay given the relatively low stakes involved.

China ultimately emerged as a driving force that brought India and the Soviet Union closer together in the Brezhnev years. Yet, in the initial years under the Soviet leader, the cooling of Sino-Soviet ties threatened to create a wedge between Moscow and New Delhi. The Soviet Union’s role as peacemaker in the 1965 India-Pakistan war, according to Donaldson, had little to do with supporting the Indian cause but rather containing “Chinese influence and expansion in Asia,” which drove Soviet leaders to strive for improving Indian-Pakistani relations.138 By 1969, however, the Soviets gave up trying to strengthen ties between the two countries, realizing that having India firmly on its side was more valuable in its competition against China in Asia.

By the end of the 1960s, Soviet policymakers concluded that the unfolding Sino-Soviet split had “transformed international politics.” Thereafter, the United States was understood “as a more limited threat” as compared to China.139 While the Soviet Union struck a level of detente with the United States during the mid-1970s, Sino-Soviet differences hardened further. Writing in 1977, William R. Feeney identified that “one of Moscow’s major foreign policy goals is to isolate and contain the PRC by strengthening ties with such peripheral countries such as India, Japan, North Korea and Vietnam.”140 The Soviet Union’s Asia strategy concentrated on containing China’s power and influence. Moscow used its strong ties with New Delhi to help achieve this goal.

Sino-Soviet relations reached their nadir in 1969 when Soviet and Chinese forces clashed at the Ussuri river on the eastern Sino-Soviet border. Further battles between the two countries ensued along with the border, with the Soviets even “deliberately hinting” that they might use nuclear weapons on China’s “nascent” nuclear facilities.141 The Soviet Union, therefore, saw great promise in expanding its security relationship with India and linking it with the rest of the region. The “Brezhnev plan,” as it came to be known, envisaged a Soviet-led regional collective security system in Asia, driven by a desire to contain China.142 The idea was first expounded by Brezhnev at the World Conference of Communist Parties in Moscow in 1969, where a “trial balloon” was introduced to test the geopolitical waters for a collective security framework in Asia.143 While the Soviets were publicly silent about potential members of the arrangement, an article published in Izvestiya a few days before Brezhnev spoke “specifically listed India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Burma, Cambodia and Singapore” as states that were “striving to consolidate their sovereignty and economic independence,” making them attractive partners.144 India, naturally, was the key target for the Soviets given that “endorsement by India might well help to sell the Asian collective security idea to the neutral and non-aligned states of the continent.”145

Despite its poor relations with Beijing, however, New Delhi was reluctant to join a scheme that many Indian political leaders considered “incompatible” with India’s tradition of non-alignment.146 Even in 1971, when Gandhi finally agreed to sign the cooperation treaty  with the Soviet Union, India successfully resisted “strong” Soviet pressure to join a collective security system.147 The Soviet courting of India was seen as the “most concerted diplomatic effort to enlist support for the creation of an Asian collective security system.”148 The inability to convince New Delhi to join the collective security structure to contain China was the Soviet Union’s greatest failure in its relationship with India.

It is unclear whether the Soviets wanted to ally with India against China or simply use New Delhi to contain Beijing’s power and influence. While the Soviet and Indian militaries never conducted joint exercises with an aim to fight against China, they did share intelligence about Chinese troop movements.149 Instead of a bilateral military pact, Brezhnev himself was far more interested in having India as an important part of a Moscow-led collective security framework in Asia. India’s decision to not join the framework disappointed the Soviets, given this was a clear push to shape the regional order in Moscow’s favor.

While Brezhnev’s enthusiasm for cultivating close ties with India may have been less intense than Khrushchev’s, it nonetheless drove Soviet engagement. In 1974, the aged Soviet leader “envisaged India as the Soviet Union’s privileged strategic partner in the Third World,” representing a pro-Soviet “bridgehead” to greater Asia.150 Under the leadership of Gandhi, however, India avoided being drawn closer into the Soviet orbit and remained officially non-aligned. Despite formalizing a special relationship with India through the 1971 bilateral cooperation treaty, the Soviets came to understand that the relationship with New Delhi had reached a ceiling. Despite the initial promise of socialism taking root in India and New Delhi firmly supporting Moscow in the Cold War confrontation with the United States, shared concerns over the perceived threat of China were largely what drove Soviet policy toward India in the Brezhnev era.

The Post-Brezhnev and Gorbachev Era: 1982–1991 

Brezhnev died in November 1982 and was succeeded by former KGB chief Yuri Andropov for 15 months and subsequently by Konstantin Chernenko for a little over a year. Both New Delhi and Moscow had already begun to alter their geopolitical orientations a few months before Brezhnev’s passing. In the case of India, Gandhi had a relatively successful visit to the United States in July 1982 to meet President Ronald Reagan. Despite being “short on specific agreements” the two sides settled a long-standing dispute over nuclear fuel, but “more importantly, the two sides took a potentially significant step towards revitalizing their oft-troubled friendship.” An Indian newspaper recognized that both sides succeeded “to not let past differences obscure the importance of the two countries to each other.” Soviet-Indian relations had experienced a “strain and coolness”’ that seemed to emanate from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan three years prior.151 Sino-Soviet ties, on the other hand, began to move in a more positive direction with Brezhnev’s “conciliatory” speech in Tashkent in March 1982 and with the Soviet leader calling for “mutual steps to improve relations between the two.” The Christian Science Monitor described Brezhnev playing the Soviet Union’s “China card” with Moscow eager to exploit the chill in Sino-American relations caused by “President Reagan’s continued sales of fighter planes to Taiwan and China’s increasingly vocal insistence that Washington accept a cutoff date” for the sale of weapons to Taiwan.152

Convergences on various foreign policy initiatives, however, did not amount to complete congruence in the Soviet-Indian relationship, with the two countries differing in their outlooks toward China.

Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in March 1985 and introduced several changes in Soviet foreign policy as part of his “new thinking” and desire to “reform” communism in response to the economic stagnation in the Soviet Union by the mid-1980s. The new leader had dramatically different views of Soviet foreign policy than his predecessors. He believed in a “minimal number” of nuclear weapons rather than maximizing the Soviet arsenal. Gorbachev also thought that Soviet control over Eastern Europe was “costing too much.”153 His ascent to power coincided with Rajiv Gandhi becoming India’s prime minister after his mother, Indira Gandhi, was assassinated in October 1984. The two relatively young leaders struck up a strong friendship, with Gorbachev viewing New Delhi as an important partner for many of his global initiatives, such as his “international crusade against nuclear weapons and the arms race.” Gorbachev was keen to maintain “the Soviet position in the balance of power without economically crippling increases in defense spending.”154

Gorbachev’s first visit to India in 1986 yielded the “Delhi Declaration,” which advocated “for a nuclear weapon-free world and non-violent world — calling for the conclusion of an international convention banning the use or threat or use of nuclear weapons.”155 Opposition to nuclear weapons did not remain purely a bilateral Soviet-Indian concern. India, along with Argentina, Greece, Mexico, Sweden, and Tanzania took this further as the “Delhi Six” by penning a joint declaration to the United Nations calling for a freezing of nuclear arsenals.156 Gorbachev seized on such multilateral initiatives by calling for “Soviet and American experts to work towards a comprehensive ban on nuclear weapons tests” in 1986.157

Gorbachev soon also found common cause with Rajiv Gandhi in criticizing what they perceived as unnecessary militarization of common spaces. The vision of converting the Indian Ocean into a “zone of peace” re-emerged after first being formulated at the 1970 Non-Aligned Movement summit in Lusaka, with Gorbachev proposing numerous ways to demilitarize the Indian Ocean during his state visit to India in 1986. This included negotiations on force reductions, proposed confidence-building measures “in the military field applicable to Asia and the adjacent waters,” and “guarantees of the safety of sea lanes” throughout the Indian Ocean.158 Rajiv Gandhi also agreed with Gorbachev’s criticism of the Reagan administration’s Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly called ”Star Wars,” bluntly stating that “we resolutely oppose the militarisation of outer space.”159 In his visit to the United States in 1985, Rajiv Gandhi called Star Wars “very dangerous” and even expressed his doubts on the practicality of such a system.160

Convergences on various foreign policy initiatives, however, did not amount to complete congruence in the Soviet-Indian relationship, with the two countries differing in their outlooks toward China. After some years of better relations, India saw its border issues with China worsen after Chinese and Indian patrols “began confronting each other in the Sumdorong Chu valley” in Arunachal Pradesh, just east of Bhutan, in 1986.161 The crisis escalated in 1987 with both sides deploying around 20,000 soldiers each in the valley, with full disengagement only taking place in 1995. The Soviet Union under Gorbachev, on the other hand, began in earnest and completed to a large extent reconciliation with China as part of a “maximal diplomatic objective on the Asian continent” to establish an “Asian zone of peace” encompassing the three major continental powers (i.e., the Soviet Union, China, and India).162 Gorbachev had, therefore, returned to Khrushchev’s objectives from the 1950s of creating “a cooperative and amicable bloc of the Soviet Union, China and India.”163 Gorbachev even resurrected Brezhnev’s proposal for an Asian collective security framework and took it further by calling for “an all-Asian forum for the exchange of opinions and joint searches for constructive solutions” when Rajiv Gandhi visited Moscow in May 1985. Despite this, India remained non-committal.164 Gorbachev was intent on “establishing the USSR as a full player in the crucial Asian game just as it is in Europe”165 and suggested “a major role that India could play in an all Asia forum modelled on the 1975 Helsinki Conference,” which Rajiv Gandhi adroitly side-stepped.166

India looked at the growing normalization in Sino-Soviet affairs with suspicion. The “nervousness in Indian policymakers grew to fear” when Gorbachev “refrained from committing himself to whose side his country would take in an eventual border war with China” in 1986.167 The Soviet Union refused to unequivocally back India against China and was “conspicuously silent”’ during the Sumdorong Chu crisis of 1986–87. During the 15th anniversary of the 1971 Indo-Soviet cooperation treaty, Soviet commentary also “tried to assert that the treaty had not been directed against any third country” but was “merely the culmination of mutually beneficial India-Soviet relations.”168

Tight Indo-Soviet relations began to fizzle out in the final years of the USSR. In the late 1980s, Gorbachev’s attention was focused on reducing the Cold War tensions with the United States. In Asia, the major push towards Sino-Soviet detente continued with India no longer being a Soviet priority. The Soviet press, freer after glasnost reforms by 1990, began to criticize the Soviet relationship with India on a range of topics including its opposition to the 1968 nuclear non-proliferation treaty as well as a number of perks India had received such as the lease of a Soviet nuclear-propelled submarine and the favorable trade and debt repayment arrangements. By 1990, there even was a “perceptible end of an era sense” looming over Indo-Soviet relations, with Rajiv Gandhi’s successor Vishwanath Pratap Singh’s prime ministerial visit to the Soviet Union in July “showing the emerging hints of stress” between Moscow and New Delhi.169

Gorbachev had reportedly promised to extend the 1971 Indo-Soviet treaty, which was due to be renewed in 1991. However, he became distracted by the failed coup attempt by Soviet hardliners in August of that year and the treaty was never renewed. The eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991 would deprive India of its most important strategic, and a key economic, partner. The Soviet collapse contributed to accelerating New Delhi’s far-reaching reforms of liberalization, deregulation, and privatization in the early 1990s.170

Despite the continuing decline of the Communist Party of India — which went from the second-largest Indian political party in the Khrushchev era to a marginal player during Gorbachev’s tenure — the ideological connection between the Soviet Union and India became reenergized in the 1980s. From the Soviet perspective, India’s “anti-imperialist” identity helped make it a key ideological partner in efforts to check U.S. power.171 Across the globe, Moscow focused on cultivating closer ties with other regional powers, including Iran, Brazil, Argentina, and Indonesia, based on stoking anti-Americanism.172

Convergences on broader global topics around disarmament and denuclearization returned to the fore of Soviet-Indian relations in the Gorbachev era. This resembled the focus during the early days of the Khrushchev era. India returned to being useful to Moscow from the perspective of supporting the Soviet Union and its global causes. Soviet policymakers were by now less interested in pressing for India’s “premature transition to socialism” and instead sought to exploit “contradictions” between India and the capitalist West.173

Despite India looking to return to a non-aligned position after leaning more toward the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev era, New Delhi remained useful for the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev era. In Moscow’s eyes, India’s utility was less about its own material power, which remained limited, but rather more about New Delhi’s willingness to return to being an advocate for global peace, which often aligned with Soviet proposals. The momentum in U.S.-Indian relations of the early 1980s slowed down soon after Gorbachev came to office. A declassified Politburo report from 1986 stated that Soviet senior leaders believed that “Rajiv Gandhi has visibly turned to the Soviet Union” and has apparently “freed himself from illusions about the merits of India’s rapprochement with the United States.”174 However, India’s desire to gain access to U.S. technology, specifically supercomputers and sophisticated weapons, limited how far New Delhi was willing to lean in Moscow’s direction.175

While the domestic prospects for communism in India worsened and India was beginning to look away from decades of socialist economic planning, New Delhi and Moscow managed to cooperate on a number of international issues, such as disarmament and denuclearization and, to some extent, pushing back against increasing American militarization of outer space and the Indian Ocean.

Moscow’s attempts to coax India toward taking a softer stance toward China reflected a shift in Soviet priorities. The Soviets now wanted their Indian partner to follow their lead in no longer seeing China as a threat. Despite that India and China continued to disagree on demarcating their shared border, Moscow’s message was clear: India could no longer count on guaranteed Soviet support against China, given Moscow’s changed strategic calculations.

The Gorbachev era brought change to the Soviet-Indian relationship after the nearly two-decade-long Brezhnev era. While the domestic prospects for communism in India worsened and India was beginning to look away from decades of socialist economic planning, New Delhi and Moscow managed to cooperate on a number of international issues, such as disarmament and denuclearization and, to some extent, pushing back against increasing American militarization of outer space and the Indian Ocean. The relatively younger leaders, Gorbachev and Rajiv Gandhi, brought a fresh energy to the relationship and actively looked for areas of cooperation. However, the change in the Soviet approach toward China meant that one of the strongest pillars of the Soviet-Indian relationship in recent years began crumbling. As Gorbachev became distracted with far more consequential events occurring in eastern Europe and Rajiv Gandhi was voted out of office in 1989, the relationship showed limited ability to sustain into the early 1990s with much vigor.

Conclusion 

In retrospect, it is understandable that it took eight years after India’s independence in 1947 for the Soviet Union to see the benefits of investing in a relationship with a country that for decades had been a British colony. As Devendra Kaushik has noted, Stalin’s stance toward India “should be viewed in the backdrop of Indian reactionaries and British marshals and admirals holding key positions in the Indian government.”176 South Asia was a strategic afterthought for much of the Soviet leadership in the early years of the Cold War. It was only when Pakistan agreed to join the Baghdad Pact in 1955 that policymakers in Moscow realized that south Asia was geopolitically “active” and it was essential to get regional players on Moscow’s, rather than Washington’s, side. The United States and Pakistan signed a mutual defense assistance agreement in 1954, which presented the Soviet Union the opportunity to engage Islamabad’s arch geopolitical rival. Moscow soon learned that India was at least sympathetic, if not supportive, toward the ideals of socialism. For its part, India accepted Moscow’s outstretched hand of friendship and saw the Soviet Union as demonstrating a path toward modernization and development distinct from the capitalist ideology espoused by the former imperialist and colonial powers. While Nehru had many disagreements with both the United States and the Soviet Union, he believed the latter was “more capable of redemption because it was untainted by the evils of racism and colonialism.”177

The Indo-Soviet relationship has been described as a “product of a unique set of circumstances in the early phase of the Cold War,” and yet being “little more than a sideshow” in the larger geopolitical drama between Moscow and Washington.178 The latter claim is somewhat accurate, especially when looking at the fact that India, despite the promise shown in the mid-1950s, did not become a pivotal player in the Cold War. But the Soviet Union did genuinely take India seriously as a partner. In the Khruschev years, India was seen as a “major target of communist aspirations,” with analysts at the time believing it was “the key country in which a communist victory would tip the balance of power irrevocably against the capitalist West.”179 Despite India not fully living up to Moscow’s expectations, the Soviet Union valued the bilateral relationship and “lavished attention on India.”180

The various twists and turns of the Soviet-Indian relationship were often driven by the worldviews of their respective leaders. Khrushchev, whose tenure coincided with Nehru’s, saw India’s utility primarily from a global perspective — as a large, influential country of the Global South that was determined to resist Western domination. Nehru himself had a very internationalist outlook, rejecting “traditional balance of power imagery” with “wider interests related to the maintenance and promotion of peace and the avoidance of war” at the global level.181 Indira Gandhi, on the other hand, was a “security seeker” who saw India’s “interests in more narrow terms,” with a “regional image centred on the subcontinent rather than on an extended Asian space that lay at the heart of Nehru’s image.”182 Her narrower focus made her a useful partner for Brezhnev, who led a Soviet elite more focused on pragmatic politics rather than ideological posturing. While Khrushchev aimed to exploit “India’s position of non-alignment” to help bolster Soviet prestige as well as advance Moscow’s cause in the Cold War, Brezhnev viewed India through the lens of Sino-Soviet relations and Asian security.183 The younger and more dynamic Gorbachev also found much in common with his Indian counterpart, Rajiv Gandhi, with both being keen to champion proposals on disarmament and denuclearization on the global stage. For each of the three major Soviet leaders, therefore, there was an Indian counterpart willing to take the Soviet-Indian partnership forward.

As the Soviet Union changed its priorities under different leaders, it also began to have different expectations from its relationship with India. While the early years saw Khrushchev attempting to woo India to the Soviet side during the Cold War, Soviet foreign policy under Brezhnev pivoted to seeing India as “a bulwark, and a potential ally against the intransigent China of Mao.”184 Finally, under Gorbachev, the Soviet Union rediscovered the earlier ideological solidarity shared between the two countries, though it became increasingly evident that Moscow wanted New Delhi to follow its lead, especially when it came to interacting with China.

Ideology provided the initial ballast for the relationship and helped sustain it through the ensuing decades. However, communism as a domestic political ideology was not the primary focus of the Soviet-Indian relationship at any point in time. Instead, the focus of the Soviet Union in its relations with India was viewed through the lens of what the powerful Congress party could do for Moscow rather than what the Soviets could to help the Communist Party of India transform India into a communist state. The Soviet Union and India’s ideological convergences encompassed numerous things, such as an opposition toward unbridled free-market capitalism, agreements around the merits of a planned economy, and even a larger common worldview that Moscow and New Delhi shared against the Western world. Indian leaders, time and again, praised the Soviet Union for being a force of good in the world. In 1972, Indira Gandhi wrote that the Soviet Union “shares the Indian view on the maintenance of peace and the elimination of racialism and colonialism.”185 In fact, she had been the “only non-communist head of government” to visit Moscow in 1967 for the 50th anniversary celebration of the Russian revolution.186

India’s legacy of being a colonized state under the British had left a profound impact in the minds of its post-independence national leaders. As the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the world’s two superpowers in the years after World War II, India saw two models, both of which it could learn from — though it was clear that it did not intend to replicate either. The Soviet Union’s experience of bringing millions of people out of poverty and its history of not pursuing Western-style colonialism helped to engender a natural affinity toward it in the minds of Indian political leaders. While Stalin was unable to grasp the significance of this affinity, Khrushchev seized upon it when he came to power. Regardless of India’s political status as a parliamentary democracy and desire to maintain relatively friendly relations with the West, India had no interest in formally aligning with its erstwhile colonizers.

The Cold War confrontation against the United States was an important driver of Soviet foreign policy toward India, especially during the era of an optimistic Khrushchev and an internationalist Nehru. The Soviet Union in the mid-1950s sought likeminded friends in a number of places in its global strategic competition with the United States, and India seemed a promising investment for the Soviets. In terms of the Cold War, Moscow ultimately had few direct asks for New Delhi against Washington. The recently decolonized Indian state was inherently wary of getting too close to the West, especially after the U.S. decision to prioritize its relations with Pakistan at the expense of India. The Soviet Union took advantage of this development by rarely pressuring India to “pick a side.” The Soviet Union was often grateful to get India’s genuine support on issues ranging from establishing a so-called zone of peace in the Indian Ocean to nuclear disarmament, without requiring much convincing from Moscow’s side.

Indian foreign policy was never “completely subservient” to Moscow’s wishes even during the initial heights of the Khrushchev era when the Soviet Union was aggressively courting India with the use of aid.

Indian leaders consistently maintained that they did not believe in a strictly bipolar world divided into two opposing camps. Instead, they thought that non-alignment between the two superpowers was both a moral imperative and a strategic benefit. However, complete non-alignment turned out to be practically impossible. As the United States sought positive relations with India’s adversarial neighbors, Pakistan and later China, New Delhi concluded that it should befriend Moscow.

New Delhi’s utility to Moscow during the Cold War was rarely direct. Instead, as a declassified CIA report noted, Moscow saw the Soviet-Indian relationship “as an important means of extending its influence in the Third World,” particularly due to “India’s prestige among developing nations.”187 India’s relations with the Soviet Union, which involved a mixture of ideological affinity and regional geopolitical convergences, was by itself a powerful tool in how Moscow intended to wage the Cold War: by maximizing its influence across the Third World globally, to the detriment of the United States.

It is important to highlight, however, that at no point during the Cold War did the Soviet Union succeed in bringing India firmly into its camp. Indian foreign policy was never “completely subservient” to Moscow’s wishes even during the initial heights of the Khrushchev era when the Soviet Union was aggressively courting India with the use of aid. Despite several convergences, Nehru’s India continued to see the world differently than Khrushchev’s Soviet Union. Even at the heights of cooperation in the early 1960s, India, for example, disagreed with the Soviet Union over issues such as the deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping force in Congo, refused to recognize East Germany’s independence, and clashed with the Soviet perspective on the Vietnam War. Moreover, India “consistently refused to join the Soviets in an across-the-board condemnation of US policy.”188 India was careful that it did not lose its well-articulated position of formal non-alignment despite having a bilateral cooperation treaty with the Soviet Union. Indian officials had made sure the treaty was drafted with such language that it could offer “the same” document without any changes to the United States as well.189

While Moscow viewed India largely through a Cold War lens during the Khrushchev era, the more pressing priority that the Soviet Union accorded to its relations with India during the Brezhnev and Gorbachev eras was Moscow’s regional strategy of dealing with China. India, “as always, was considered a fulcrum for Soviet policies in Asia.”190 After all, Soviet actions of trying to balance between India and Pakistan in the mid-1960s, and even trying to mediate unsuccessfully, were driven by its China considerations. Soviet policymakers even viewed the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War principally through the prism of the Sino-Soviet split. Brezhnev’s plans of an Asian collective security system, which were also reiterated by Gorbachev, were driven by a desire to contain China — and it was for this that it would always attempt to lean on India, despite New Delhi ultimately refusing to toe the Soviet line on China.

The Soviet Union’s preoccupation with China ultimately turned out to be a critical driver in the Brezhnev and Gorbachev eras. Both the Soviet Union and India began focusing more on Asian regional geopolitics from the mid-1960s onwards. Soviet policymakers saw far greater utility from India against China, a country to which it had lost a bloody war (in 1962), rather than the United States, a country with which India still wanted to pursue positive relations. Given that Moscow consistently saw India “as a central target of opportunity for … its struggle in Asia,” the Sino-Soviet rivalry was the main driver for the Soviet-Indian relationship from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s.191

The deterioration in Sino-Soviet ties began in the Khrushchev era, but it took until the mid-to-late 1960s for the split to be completed. Soviet policymakers began to see India, and its neighbors, through the prism of its cooling relations with Beijing. Kosygin’s role as a peacemaker after the 1965 India-Pakistan war was influenced by the Soviet Union’s desire to appeal to the two belligerents and to prevent Pakistan from falling into the Chinese orbit. Similarly, Moscow’s offering of the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, and Cooperation to New Delhi in 1969 sought to secure “a special relationship with India and ensure that India stood with the Soviet Union in the latter’s escalating rivalry with China.”192 Indian officials had even identified at the time that the “potential threat posed by the PRC to both India and the Soviet Union” was the “main reason” for Moscow’s firm overture.193 Soviet behavior in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War was influenced more by the India-Pakistan crisis being an opportunity for the Chinese in the regional context that Moscow had to contend with, rather than broader considerations of the Cold War.

Despite a consistent rhetorical focus on reshaping the world order, the Soviet-Indian relationship in practice seemed to focus more on how the other country could be used to address perceived security threats. A declassified CIA report stated that Soviet security assistance “allowed India to achieve a significant military advantage over Pakistan, its most strategic threat.” For its part, the Soviets viewed “India’s size, location, and regional dominance as a roadblock to the spread of Chinese influence — their most immediate concern in South and East Asia since the early 1960s.”194 Under Gorbachev, the Soviet Union would eventually change how it viewed China, where it became clear that New Delhi’s own perception of Beijing was of little importance to Moscow. As the Sino-Soviet split deepened during the Brezhnev era, the Soviet Union tried to join hands with India in containing China. When the Soviet Union reversed its strategy towards China during the Gorbachev era, it wanted India to follow its lead.

Some analysts have concluded that India was able to get more out of its relationship with the Soviet Union than vice versa.195 While this may indeed be partly true, it does not mean that India always got its way. In the beginning of the Brezhnev era, Moscow appeared fully prepared to move away from its relatively new, but robust, relationship with New Delhi and adopt a more neutral stance around India and Pakistan, both for its self-image as a superpower as well as for managing the fall-out of the Sino-Soviet split. The Soviet decision to supply arms to Pakistan in 1968 starkly showed that Moscow put its agenda against China above the interests of its supposed friend, India. It would only be the East Pakistan crisis in 1969, ultimately leading to the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971, which would show that “Moscow needed India’s cooperation as much as New Delhi needed its.” Indira Gandhi observed in 1970 that “it is … Moscow which has turned more toward us.”196 Soviet policy towards India was often driven by a desire to have a large and influential developing country on Moscow’s side, whether it was on projecting the merits of socialism, rejecting Western military pacts, or refusing to let the Chinese dominate Asia.

Soviet motivation for keeping India “onside” through the years was also influenced by developments in other countries, where previously friendly and sympathetic regimes switched courses. Gromyko’s visit to New Delhi in 1977, for example, was regarded by the Soviets as “vital” after the nose-dive in Soviet-Egypt relations where “after Sadat’s move away from the Soviets, a repeat performance in India would have compounded problems.”197 By the time Gorbachev took office, India began to be rewarded for remaining a trusted partner, with the Soviet Union even agreeing to lease a nuclear powered Charlie­­-class submarine to India in 1988 — an arrangement that no other non-nuclear power was given during the Cold War.

The Soviet-Indian relationship is perhaps best illustrated by Gromyko’s observation that “the two countries were bound not by transitory issues such as ideology and personality, but by their national interests and vital common goals.”198 National interests and common goals were not static from the early Khrushchev era to the late Gorbachev era, but both Moscow and New Delhi made the most of their strategic convergences and commonalities while often having an “agree to disagree” approach on their divergences. The Soviet-Indian relationship had, over the course of decades, acquired a momentum of its own that gave value for both sides to keep taking interest in maintaining it rather than letting it drift away. Ultimately, it was sustained because Moscow and New Delhi saw it to be in their best interests to cooperate with each other on consequential issues and mutually agree to subordinate differences “to the larger cause of maintaining friendship.”199

The three drivers of Soviet policy toward India — the prospect of spreading communism to India, the Cold War struggle with the United States, and the Sino-Soviet relationship — were not isolated from each other. Indeed, they were all entangled at some level. Nigel Gould-Davies wrote in 2003 that the Cold War was unique insofar that it involved an “ideological bipolarity” where “the two superpowers held fundamentally incompatible conceptions of the organization of political, economic, and social life.” Unlike conventional geopolitical rivalries that focus on security, “power came in large measure to be defined in ideological terms, gains or losses during the Cold War” between Moscow and Washington.200 Additionally, differences within the ideology of communism came to be a key factor in the Sino-Soviet split between Moscow and Beijing. The Soviet Union’s policy towards India was ultimately less about how Soviet ideology could influence India domestically and more about how India could play a role in the ideological and geopolitical struggles it had with the United States and China. For all the warmth of the Soviet-Indian relationship for over four decades, Soviet leaders were constantly calculating how they could maximize their ties with a large and influential Asian country for achieving the core objectives of Soviet foreign policy.

Gokul Sahni is based in Singapore and writes about geopolitics, geoeconomics, and Indian foreign policy. He has an MBA from the University of Oxford, an M.Sc. in international relations from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and an M.A. from the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. He can be followed on X  @Gokul_Sahni.

Image: Photo Division, Government of India